OnePlus One Ban in India Lifted

One Plus One sales ban in India was lifted by Delhi High Court Wednesday after seeing that neither OnePlus nor Micromax competes nor eats each other’s territory. The marketing and import of the OnePlus’ One smartphone has been banned by Judge Manmohan Singh on December 16, when Indian phone maker MicroMax complained that the Chinese OEM’s smartphone violates its exclusive partnership with Cyanogen for services and software in India. OnePlus One has the Cyanogen’s CyanogenMod as its operating system.

Judges RK Gauba and Pradeep Nandrajog ended the temporary injunction this week. They detailed that the ad-interim injunction applies when the plaintiff has a strong prima-facie and there is injury done to the plaintiff when the defendant goes on with its business activity. Such will produce more favor of the plaintiff.

In the Micromax-OnePlus case, the court explained the interim injunctions affect the right of OnePlus, which was not given the chance to file its response. Justice allows the defendant, to have its side be heard prior to an order that can adversely affect it. The two companies sell handsets of different prices and use different OS versions. Micromax sells their device at Rs 8,000 per unit, while OnePlus One is tagged Rs 22,000. Running the OnePlus device is the CyanogenMod 11s while Micromax’ Yureka is run by version 11.

When the One Plus One ban in India was lifted, the court has turned the case back to Judge Manmohan, who is set to hear from Micromax, Cyanogen and OnePlus on January 7. The judge will hear the sides of the three companies – detailed issues, software features and the agreements of Micromax and OnePlus with Cyanogen.

Micromax entered an exclusive deal with Cyanogen for its first device under the label YU, which will be in the market next month. Meanwhile, OnePlus’ deal with Cyanogen is non-exclusive, which is to provide software to its smartphone for two years. According to Cyanogen, its deal with Micromax supersedes its deal with OnePlus in India.

OnePlus does not likely want to break its relationship with Cyanogen which can disrupt the sale of its devices in other countries, while wanting to preserve its potential substantial share in India’s telecommunication market. OnePlus asked for three months to sell its stock while developing a replacement of Cyanogen, but Micromax disagreed.

The court observed Cyanogen was not fair to both companies. The software firm did not make Micromax aware of its other commitments in India, especially with OnePlus. It is required by the court to file a statement for the case filed by Micromax.

With One Plus One ban in India being lifted, OnePlus is expected to resume the import of its smartphone to India. OnePlus is sold in India via Amazon. However, this is just a small victory for OnePlus because Cyanogen announced there would be no updates to be made for OnePlus One users in the country. The Chinese OEM also acted on a remedy, that it is working on a custom ROM which will be released next year to its Indian buyers.